I think it would be very useful to have some kind of a visual clue for the active and selected objects when the 3D window is in solid/shaded/textured mode. The way it is now, it's very easy to get confused and the user has to switch to and from the wireframe mode constantly. One possible solution would be to display the active and selected objects with a light and dark purple wireframe overlaid on the shaded model (similar to Draw Extra/Wire turned on, but with a different color depending on the state of the object).